If I haven't linked to her before, let me link to the US woman married to a Japanese fellow in SF who (unlike me) prefers Japan: Homesick Home.

That could have been me. It easily still could be me. Not in a bad way, mind you, just in a "thank god I love Portland" kind of way.

She just wrote about an article in SF Gate about a Japanese Consul Party the Homesick Home Blogger attended:

"Celebrating the new year, Japanese Consul General Makoto Yamanaka threw a party Thursday at the Miyako Hotel, where more than half the guests were speaking Japanese and lines for sushi and tempura were longer than lines for cheese wedges. At this pep rally for the Japanese American community (which is dwindling because of intermarriage), peace was toasted and the Year of the Boar welcomed as a metaphor for inner strength and fortitude. "

And Homesick Home took issue with "dwindling because of intermarriage".

And so do I. I totally agree with her argument that:

"the Japanese American community isn`t really "dwindling because of intermarriage" --- it`s being KEPT ALIVE by intermarriage.

Go to our Japanese school some Saturday, and you`ll see hundreds of kids from all over the Bay Area. Many of them very obviously have one non-Japanese parent -- see all their their lighter-colored hair and eyes, all those pointy noses? And yet, what language do you hear them speaking? What culture are the kids learning about?

Behind every half-Japanese kid at that school is a non-Japanese parent who supports her kid`s "Japanese-ness."

And what I have to add to that argument is that sometimes its DAMN HARD to be supportive. It's not the easiest thing in the world to purposefully put you and your children into groups, schools, friends that are not your native language, your native way of friendship, your native values, etc.

And it's doubly hard to do that when your Japanese husband isn't 100 percent behind you. Not that Naoto doesn't support it, but he isn't actively looking for those Japanese opportunities, that would be my doing.

And it's 90 percent due to the fact that I don't want my children to tell me (as Jun Takahara at Earlham did) they are dissapointed I didn't make them learn Japanese.

So, as a commenter said on Homesick Home:

"I get quite annoyed about things like this. It's bad enough when native Japanese have issues with Japanese-Americans for being too American. It's equally bad when the Americans start pointing out that we're not Japanese enough."

So there.